Sunday, November 12, 2017

September job openings, wholesale sales & inventories

the only agency reports released this week were the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) for September from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the September report on Wholesale Trade, Sales and Inventories from the Census Bureau, and the Consumer Credit Report for September from the Fed...the later showed that overall consumer credit, a measure of non-real estate debt, expanded by a seasonally adjusted $20.8 billion, or at a 6.6% annual rate, as non-revolving credit expanded at a 6.3% rate to $2,782.3 billion and revolving credit outstanding rose at a 7.7% rate to $1,005.6 billion...this week also saw the release of the Mortgage Monitor for September(pdf) from Black Knight Financial Services, which indicated that 4.40% of all mortgages were delinquent in September, up from 3.93% in August and up from 4.27% in September of 2016, and that 0.70% of all mortgages were in the foreclosure process, down from from 0.76% in August and down from 1.00% a year ago....mortgage delinquencies have been elevated in regions of the country where properties have experienced hurricane damage...

the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) report for September from the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that seasonally adjusted job openings increased by 3,000, from 6,090,000 in August to 6,093,000 in September, after August job openings were revised 8,000 higher, from 6,082,000 to 6,090,000...September's jobs openings were still 7.5% higher than the 5,666,000 job openings reported in September a year ago, as the job opening ratio expressed as a percentage of the employed was unchanged at 4.0% in September, while it was up from 3.8% a year ago...there were wide differences in job openings between industries, from the 156,000 job opening increase to 1,055,000 openings in the broad professional and business services sector, to the 111,000 job opening decrease to 757,000 openings in the leisure and hospitality sector (see table 1 for more details)...like most BLS releases, the press release for this report is easy to understand and also refers us to the associated table for the data cited, which are linked at the end of the release...

September Wholesale Sales Up 1.5%, Wholesale Inventories Up 0.3%

the September report on Wholesale Trade, Sales and Inventories (pdf) from the Census Bureau estimated that the seasonally adjusted value of wholesale sales was at $480.5 billion, up 1.3 percent (±0.4 percent) from the revised August level, and up 8.5 percent (±1.2 percent) from the wholesale sales of September 2016... the August preliminary estimate was revised up to $474.5 billion from the $473.4 billion in wholesale sales reported last month, which revised the July to August change to +1.9%.... September wholesale sales of durable goods were up 0.7 percent from August and were up 9.8 percent from a year earlier, with a 3.4% increase in wholesale sales of metals and minerals leading the durables increase for the month, while wholesale sales of nondurable goods were up 1.8 percent from August and were up 7.4 percent from last September, with a 12.6% increase in wholesale sales of petroleum and petroleum products offsetting decreases in wholesales sales of most other non-durables...as an intermediate activity, wholesale sales are not included in GDP except insofar as they are a trade service, since the traded goods themselves do not represent an increase in the output of the goods produced or finally sold....

on the other hand, the monthly change in private inventories is a major factor in GDP, as additional goods left in a warehouse represent goods that were produced but not sold, and this September report estimated that wholesale inventories were valued at a seasonally adjusted $609.5 billion at month end, up 0.3 percent (±0.4 percent)* from the revised August level and 8.5 percent (±1.2 percent) higher than in September a year ago....August's inventory value was revised from $608.1 billion to $607.47 billion, which meant that the July to August percent change was revised from the advance estimate of +0.9 percent to +0.8 percent...wholesale inventories of durable goods were up 0.3 percent from August, and were up 5.7 percent from a year ago, with 0.7% higher wholesale inventories of electrical and electronic goods leading the September durables increase...at the same time, the value of wholesale inventories of nondurable goods were up 0.4 percent from August and were up 3.0 percent from last September, as the value of wholesale inventories of petroleum and petroleum products was up 3.0%, largely on higher prices, as the Energy department has been reporting falling inventories all summer…

note on the graphs used here

in March a year ago the St Louis Fed, home to the FRED graphs, changed their graphs to an interactive format, which apparently necessitated eliminating some of the incompatible options which we had used in creating our static graphs before then...as a result, many of the FRED graphs we've included on this website previous to that date, all of which were all created and stored at the FRED site and which we'd always hyperlinked back there, were reformatted, which in many cases changed our bar graphs to line graphs, and some cases rendered them unreadable... however, you can still click the text links we've always used in referring to them to view versions of our graphs as interactive graphs on the FRED site, or in the case where an older graph has gone missing, click on the blank space where it had been in order to view it in the new format....